Excited by leaks and teasers, Pokémon Scarlet and Violet promised many fans amazing graphics and creative new Pokémon in the game. However with each teaser, fans grew more and more disappointed and the official release of the game on Nov. 18, failed to fulfill expectations. Fans first experienced horrible “new” designs, with bugs and glitches as they would continue to play the underdeveloped game.

Fans deliberately looked through the new Pokémons released for Scarlet and Violet, and soon grew disappointed by the dull designs. Although some new Pokémon drew excitement and popularity, like Lechonk, a cute little pig, and Greavard, an affectionate zombie dog, most Pokémon seemed to have little effort put into them.

One example is Wiglett, a Pokémon very reminiscent of Diglett, both in name and design. Diglett is a ground mole introduced in the first generation of Pokémon, and Wiglett, well, is also a ground mole, except it’s white and is a little skinnier. Wiglett also has an evolution, Wugtrio, where essentially 3 wigletts are accounted for one Pokémon, which further reflects its similarity to diglett since its evolution, dugtrio, is very reminiscent in name and also consists of three diglett’s accounting for one Pokémon. I considered this to be lazy of the developers since it seemed pointless to release a “new” Pokémon when they could have made a regional form for diglett instead, or just not released it at all. 

A new evolution for dunsparce, dudunspare, was also released for Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, demonstrating the developers’ unoriginality. Dudunarce was an evolution released for the previous dunsparce from generation II, however, it was essentially identical to dunsparce, a yellow and turquoise bug-resembling Pokémon, with the only difference being an extra segment on its body. No color changes or visual changes. Dudunsparce was a completely unnecessary release, from the lack of creativity in the name and design, which further highlights the undermining effort put into the game.

As fans continued to play Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, they quickly noticed the jumbled state it was released in. Bugs and glitches, crashes, pop-ins, and horrible frame rates. Videos of these were quickly distributed on social media, where non-playable characters and game details would suddenly appear in proximity. “Pop-ins” is a result of a game’s poor render capabilities, where contents would suddenly “pop” during gameplay. Although the game is still playable, it takes away from the experience significantly, as it doesn’t make the game feel “natural”.

Frame rate drops, however, can quite infuriate a player. The worst can be seen during the catching animation of Pokémon, where the frame rates can drop almost to single digits. The unplayable experiences can be seen in videos posted by Twitter users, where the player undergoes horrible lag, with the screen even freezing for a brief couple of seconds to render the content. Considering Pokémon is a role-playing game, the graphical interface one experiences are quite major in contributing to the enjoyment of the game. 

In my personal opinion, I would consider Pokémon Scarlet and Violet to be in an unreleased state. There are way too many bugs and glitches to ignore, making the gameplay unenjoyable. During my experience, my copy of Pokémon Scarlet crashed on multiple occasions and frequently froze for a brief moment during Pokémon battles.

Although future patches and updates are expected to revamp the gameplay, it is still disappointing coming from all the hype and excitement, to play a game in its development. However, such patches and fixes could not patch the open wound of horrible Pokémon designs. With the majority of Pokémon looking either unoriginal or foolish, the Pokémon released from the game is sure to tarnish the reputation of the Pokémon design. 

2/10